


prove to me I'm not gonna die alone

by scarecrowes



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 07:49:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrowes/pseuds/scarecrowes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A series of loosely related vignettes, from a list of one-word prompts. Sadness and history spoilers abound.</p>
    </blockquote>





	prove to me I'm not gonna die alone

**Author's Note:**

> A series of loosely related vignettes, from a list of one-word prompts. Sadness and history spoilers abound.

**\- dreams**

AR sat with him for six hours and most of it was numbers, numbers and sharp capped teeth and that quiet way that was a relief from the time Meyer always spent between Benny and Salvatore.

It’s Charlie, he reminds himself, once a week maybe. It’s Charlie now.

“It’s funny, don’t you think?” AR asks him, over the coffee they get before leaving. “We’re not so different, you and me.” 

It’s funny, how you meet the ghosts that haunt you. 

**\- marriage**

“Where are you going?” Anna asks, and later, she’ll curl up into herself, away from him, cold.

“It’s still just us, right?” Charlie asks, and later he’ll ignore Meyer’s silence in favor of a girl’s short dress and curt smile, and the booze is there so he doesn’t curl up, and away from the rest. 

**\- regrets**

“I feel like I got used up a long time ago.” 

He says it to no one, alone in the kitchen with his Parliaments. It’s before Anna leaves, and after Charlie’s eyes go bright and warm in a visitation cell six years too late; he wonders if this is how his father felt. 

He wonders which one he means. 

**\- new beginnings**

Batista’s quiet, secretive, willing to meet Meyer low-key in a back room without complaining about the lack of noise or girls. 

He smells like oranges instead of expensive cologne. It’s enough to pretend this one might last. 

**\- fear**

“You ain’t gonna just forget about me, right?” 

Charlie said it half a joke, but Meyer knows that ugly look in his eyes. It was there when they were smaller, before Rothstein tamped it down. It’s there now, again, that sucking pit that Charlie tries to fill with people - the void in him that burns hot where AR’s, Meyer’s own feels empty, cold. 

“Course not, Luck. You and me, right?” 

He’ll lay out plans for Batista later, the dream he’s wanted for years splayed at their fingertips. And he’ll swallow the cold metal taste in his throat that’s like panic, passing off the kingdom they built over concrete like it was sand. 

**\- reuniting**

Teddy leaves them alone because she isn’t Anna and doesn’t go cowed and quiet when he nods her toward the door.

Charlie’s quiet, bolts of gray in his black hair, thin lines worn around the edges of him.

It’s terrifying, but Meyer can ignore it because it’s the way of things. Expected. Us, older, more tired. Just us. 

It’s with Charlie’s head buried in the crook of his neck, shaking, shaking because he misses home and Meyer’s the last scrap he has of it, that it hits him like a bolt from the blue and he can’t pretend it’s _us, just us._  

They don’t fit, anymore. 

**\- cheating**

Rothstein taught Meyer a certain kind of finesse in counting cards. He’d been doing it long before they met, of course - but there’s a way that the Bankroll looked at people…

(the way Meyer will sometimes look at Anna, or the way Charlie knew to find him buckled and trembling during the worst thunderstorm they had all year, that way that—) 

It was that sort of thing that had people calling him the Wolf. 

**\- rebellion**

Later, he’ll dream of Benny’s houndstooth coat in his hands, the one he bought. It’s heavy like it’s wet, like he’s sinking with it. 

“I don’t owe you nothing.” 

There must have been worse last words he could’ve had. 

**\- rivalry**

“You stupid fuck.” 

He heard about Charlie before anyone else, because that was how their machine ran. Because Adriana was left with his phone number and a brief note for emergencies, and because their walls were slipping away. 

“You stupid, dago fuck.” 

He says it shaking, he says it quiet, into his fist with his mouth full of smoke and bourbon. 

He won’t go to the funeral, because he’s a quiet sort, because he didn’t for his father. But he waits a week or two, he waits and visits them both at once.

He leaves a stone for AR, and for Charlie, his choked tongue.

“You were supposed to wait, you son of a bitch.” 

**\- storm**

Meyer stopped being scared of the rain a long time ago. 

It’s not the rain itself, of course. The thunder, the ugly snap of light, that was bad, when he was a kid. He’d hide, tucked back in the cupboard when he was small enough, stealing Charlie’s covers when he wasn’t. His head full of half-memories, fire outside the windows, his mother crying and trying to get Jake to stop. 

The storm beats against the roof and he stares at it, letting each rumble, each flicker coil through him like a knife.

He has years of nightmares to fight it with. 

**\- letting go**

They meet in front of the library because it’s familiar, close but unmarked with the ugly things they were. 

There are kids here on school days, maybe more than they ever had around growing up. Old timers and scholars too, students, tourists, and the scattered poor that clutter the staircase and the lions’ shadows. It’s noisy, the screech and push, the glow of neon something Meyer grew old to and Charlie never got to see. But the City is still the City, and if they wander a ways, they always find the rest. 

“Where you been, Little Meyer?” 

Low, barking East Side grate beckons him down a little, always did. Three steps toward the street and Charlie’s hand is offering him a cigarette. 

“Nowhere in particular, Charlie.” 

Rothstein’s somewhere, maybe. Or Carolyn and her poetry, her dated fur coats. Anna and her beetles, her birds. 

His grandkids visit every once and a while, down in Florida. There’s that, though they’re greeting nothing but stones. 

“You wanna head over to Lindy’s, maybe?” 

“Lindy’s isn’t there anymore, Charlie.” 

“Yeah, well…” 

There’s that. There’s always that. 


End file.
